MBOYA, TOM (KENYA)

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06891166
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2021
• Case Number: F-2021-00126

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KENYA Tom MBOYA
Minister of Economic Planning and Development
Tom Mboya, Kenya's Minister for
Economic Planning and Development,
has for many years played a major
role in the labor, political, con-
stitutional and economic life of
Kenya. Articulate, brilliantly
logical, and a master political
tactician, Mboya is by far the most
able and intelligent man in the
Kenya Cabinet. He is also the most
controversial political personality
in Kenya today. In the behind-the-
scenes race already being run for
the presidential successor to Jomo
Kenyatta, Mboya suffers from the
liabilities of being too young (he is 37), too
Westernized and too detribalized.
Although he has surrounded himself with bright,
moderate politicians and civil servants who look-to
him for leadership and guidance, Mboya
is
vehemently opposed by the younger Kikuyus
-Their efforts to neutralize him have been a signifi-
cant factor in recent Kenya internal politics.
Kenyatta himself
is well aware of the skills and talents
the Minister brings to the government, and he is not
averse to having Mboya do work in Parliament and
elsewhere where intelligence and political skill are
required.
For a long time Mboya was better known abroad
than any other Kenya politician.
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His
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opponents have used this close identification with
the US as a weapon against him. In 1965, one of
his fellow Luo tribesmen in the House of Representa-
tives referred to Mboya as the "American Ambassador
to Kenya."
It is a reflection, nevertheless, of Mboya's
competence and resilience that he has been able to
survive the jealousies and rivalries of Kenya
politics and remain an important political factor
in the country. At the present time he realizes
that having deliberately established his reputation
as a non-tribal politician from a Nairobi constit-
uency whose main interest was the problems of the
lirban worker, he now lacks any solid tribal politi-
cal base. His recent efforts have been aimed at
trying to build a new image of himself as a leader
of the Luo tribe, the second largest in Kenya, and
as one who is interested in the fate of the peasantry.
In 1965, Mboya wrote a policy paper defining
African socialism which Kenyatta proclaimed as the
"Bible" of Kenya and which was to guide national
policy. Among other things, the paper recommended
progressive taxes to guarantee equitable distribution
of wealth and income, a diffusion of ownership #0
avoid a concentration of economic power, a range of
controls to ensure that property is used in the
interests of society, various forms of ownership
ranging from private to state; political democracy
and mutual social responsibility. He has also pushed
much controversial legislation through Parliament,
including a hotly-contested vote of confidence in thpt
government
Mboya was also involved in almost
all the negotiations leading to the formation of the
East African Community.
Recently Mboya warned that the cuirent austerity
measures in the UK and the restrictions in the US
balance of payments program would result in an in-
creasing shortage of foreign capital, both public
and private, for development in Kenya, and he stressed
the need for intensified self-reliance within the
country. Mboya sees "Kenyanization" as an integral
part of self-reliance, and he feels that the country
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cannot tolerate any monopoly of its economic and
social life by non-Africans.
Born of Luo parents on 15 August 1930 at Rusinga
Island, Lake Victoria, Mboya was baptized into the
Roman Catholic Church with the name Thomas Joseph
Adhiambo Mboya. He was educated at Kabaa mission,
St. Mary's School, and at Holy Ghost College, a
secondary school from which he had to withdraw when
his father could no longer afford the tuition. He
then took a free three-year public health course and
qualified as a sanitation inspector for the Nairobi
City Council. It was in this job that he began to
take an interest in the labor movement. About 1951
he became president of the African Staff Association
and built it into the Kenya Local Government Workers
Union. He became the union's national general secre-
tary. By 1953 he had become secretary general of the
KFL, a post he held for the next ten years. It was
the leadership of the KFL that served as the founda-
tion for his future political successes. Mboya first
became generally known in 1955, when he served as
mediator in a Mombasa port strike and won a large
pay raise for the dockworkers. The following year
he obtained a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford,
England. During that year he visited the US and
other countries. In the course of these travelThe
made a number of contacts in the International Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
It was during these years that Mboya's political
star began to rise. In 1953 he was treasurer of the
Kenya African Union just before it was proscribed for
its alleged connection with the Mau Mau terrorist
organization. In March 1957 he won the Nairobi seat
in the first African constituency elections, and he
immediately proceeded to bind the eight African
Elected Members into a solid group strongly opposed
to the Lyttleton constitution under which they had
been elected. He demanded that the British govern-
ment recognize Kenya as an independent African country
which should be advanced gradually toward self govern-
ment. His tactics were largely responsible for the
breakdown of the Lyttleton constitution and for the
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subsequent imposition of the Lennox-Boyd coqstitti-.
tion on Kenya. This constitution gave the Africans
six more elected members in Parliament. Mboya
came president of the Nairobi People's Convention
Party in 1957, and two years later, after disagree-
ing with the Constituency Elected Members Organiza-
tion on land policy, he helped form the Kenya
Independence Movement.
In April 1960 Mboya became secretary general of
the newly formed Kenya African National Union (KANU),
the vitally important political post that he still
holds. The following year he was re-elected to
Parliament by an overwhelming majority, and in April
1962 he was named Minister of Labor. During the
ensuing year he was credited with Kenya's successes
in constitutional talks with the UK and was rewarded
with the portfolios for Justice and Constitutional
Affairs in the first all-KANU cabinet formed in June
1963. In this post he performed brilliantly in
preparing the republican constitution and seeing it
through Parliament. When Kenya became a republic in
December 1964, Mboya was given the Ministry of
Economic Planning and Development. The ministry,
though important, represented something less than
Mboya had wanted, but he has worked hard and ener-
getically at it over the past three and a half yars.
Mboya has held responsible positions in several
international organizations, including the African
Trade Union Federation, the 10FTU, the Pan-African
Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern
Africa, the All-African Peoples Conference, and the
UN Economic Commission for Africa.
Personable and articulate, Mboya is a superb
orator in both English and Swahili, and he usually
speaks extemporaneously. His answers in any inter-
view are so well organized that they can be printed
as spoken without any change and he generally has his
emotions well under control.
In December 1967 he was involved
in a shooting incident which was rumored to have been
an attempt to assassinate him.
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In 1959 Mboya was awarded an honorary degree
of Doctor of Laws by Howard University. In 1963
he published a book entitled Freedom and After.
Mboya, who has had two unsuccessful marriages out-
side the church, was marl--; in A r Ai-11 ril r�ici rininrsric7
in 1962 to Pamela Odede,
The Mboyas now have
four children
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